OT: Which video format to digital camera videos?

[Asmala]

I have Canon Ixus 50 digital camera, and it is capable of recording 640x480 video. The videos are 14 Mb/s, so I'd like to compress them before storing to disc. What codec would you suggest?

[Suicide Junkie]

Nothing that requires a particular viewer, such as quicktime, for sure.
Make sure you can link people to a download of the codec if they don't have it already.

[Fyron]

Xvid (http://www.xvid.org/) (though I don't think they provide compiled binaries, just source code). Some help on encoding here (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/gknot-main4.htm) and here (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/xvid.htm). Definitely try to stay away from crap like DivX. Virtual Dub (http://www.virtualdub.org/) is some good free video editing software, though it certainly isn't as glitzy as its overpriced commercial brethren.

[Asmala]

It's a problem if there's no binaries to Xvid since I've Windows XP and no compiler. Btw, why DivX is crap?

[Fyron]

If you go to the tutorial sites I linked to, they link to compiled binaries and software useful for encoding movies in Xvid.

Compared to other formats, DivX has a high rate of visual artifacts produced by its compression algorithms. Xvid is qualitatively superior in this regard. Definitely not worth paying any money for second-rate proprietary DivX software, or using the free ad-banner versions (at least, they were ad-banner versions long ago when I used it).

[Asmala]

I found Xvid binaries and tested them. Compression quality is good, and I'm very satisfied with the codec except that the brightness of the video isn't same.

Below are cropped screenshots from the same video.

Original:
http://www.students.tut.fi/~asmalas/original.jpg

Xvid:
http://www.students.tut.fi/~asmalas/xvid.jpg

[Fyron]

Try playing around with the settings you use for the compression?